Changing Indonesian Law School Test

““Every legal analysis should begin at the point of reason, continue along a path of logic and arrive at a fundamentally fair result” (Lind, 2007)”

Law School Admission Test in countries like the US, Canada, and others put logical reasoning as well as Logic Games and reading comprehension on their admission test. Both Logic Games and Reading Comprehension are each weighted at 25%, while the Logical reasoning section takes a whopping 50%. The purpose is very reasonable. Many factors enter into the decision making of a legal practitioner. From self-interest to moral values, from psychology to science. Many factors that differ from one person to another contribute to a decision-making process. Reason and logic hold every person’s factor of decision making in check for a fair result.  Postgraduate law school students aren’t expected to know only the written law but also must have a basic understanding of arguments in the form of premise, assumption, and conclusion. Logical reasoning measures our ability to analyze and evaluate arguments. Take the argument below:

P1: “All human will die someday” and;

P2: “We are human.”

The conclusion to these sets of premises would be: “we will die someday.”  

If I take the premise: “We are human” and leave only a premise:

P1: ”Human will die someday” and;

a conclusion: “we will die someday.”

You can guess what the other premise is, so the conclusion can make sense: “We are human.” Okay, that is too obvious. Let’s get a more challenging one. Take a Logical Reasoning Question of LSAT Preptest. Premise:

P1: “Maria won this year’s local sailboat race by beating Sue, the winner in each of the four previous years.”

Conclusion: “Maria trained Hard.”

Can you guess the second premise so the conclusion can make sense from a couple of multiple-choices answers below:

A.      Sue did not train as hard as Maria;

B.      If Maria trained hard she would win the sailboat race;

C.      Maria could beat a four-time winner only if she trained hard;

D.     If Sue trained hard, she would win the sailboat race;

E.      Sue is usually a faster sailboat racer than Maria.

Not that simple answer for most people, right?  Okay, you can guess what would be the logical second premise for the conclusion to make sense. Reversing the given premise to the conclusion: “just because Maria won this year’s local sailboat race by beating Sue, the winner in each of the four previous years, does it mean she trained hard? No, it doesn’t have to. Winning the race by beating the winner of the four previous years does not only mean Maria trained hard. It could be that Sue got sick or Maria got super lucky, or Maria cheated and many other possibilities. In multiple choices question, we pick the best possibilities. In Option A, it could mean that both Sue and Maria are lazy even though it uses the word “..train as hard..”. In option B, D, and E, the answers are not a guarantee that Maria won the race.  So option C is the best answer.  The words “only if” eliminate any other possibilities, thus makes it the best choice.

Legal analysis is just like this. You are presented with a set of evidence or documents or whatever it is, within legal topics, and then you have to conclude all of that or guess correctly premise so the conclusion can make sense. In a criminal case, for example, you have premises, in terms of witnesses and evidence and a conclusion, that someone just died. You can find who did it(another premise) from witnesses’ testimony and evidence by finding the bridge between the premise and conclusion. Drafting an agreement, for example, you know the premises in terms of a client’s goal and facts or even written law. Now you have to make a conclusion in terms of translating such premises to an agreement. The mastery skills of logical reasoning are a perfect tool as well as an in-depth understanding of both written law and precedent accompanied by experience for a legal practitioner.

Unfortunately, for my country, the law school acceptance test is not emphasized on logical reasoning. Let’s, for a second, put aside the difference of post-secondary education in the US and Indonesia. When I entered Law School at Gadjah Mada University (best law school in Indonesia according to many), the test was basic maths, Indonesian, and English combine with Indonesian History, sociology, economics, and geography. Recently, improvement has been made by putting potential academic test, and one of the features is general logic, which, according to the author, it is too generic. It is not the same with logical reasoning. The purpose of such test is also very general. First, to test a candidate's ability to finish university on a timely schedule. (Lembaga Tes Masuk Perguruan Tinggi, n.d.) To top that, this test is not only for law school candidates but also for any other non-science faculty candidates.

Compare the purpose of logical reasoning in LSAT for countries like the US, Canada, and others. They designed the logical reasoning question to test your skill of:

·         recognizing the parts of an argument and their relationships and similarities and differences between patterns of reasoning;

·         drawing well-supported conclusions;

·         reasoning by analogy;

·         recognizing misunderstandings or points of disagreement;

·         determining how additional evidence affects an argument;

·         detecting assumptions made by particular arguments;

·         identifying and applying principles or rules;

·         identifying flaws in arguments and identifying explanations.

* (Law School Admission Council, n.d.)

Unsurprisingly, the top law schools and great jurists are coming from such countries. They treat law and legal practitioners with a higher standard. It makes sense. Law is the very first thing that put us as a country together in term of our constitution. Furthermore, our daily life is also driven by law and regulation. Without it, the Republic crumbles. Government by law prevails to the extent that inhabitants of a country are predominantly disposed (a) to conform their conduct to rules and principles pronounced to be law there by some distinct class or classes of officials, (b) to organize their activities with a view to compatibility with such official pronouncements, and (c) to support, or at least to accept, the use of social force to secure compliance in general with such pronouncements (Michelman, July 2003). With such importance, Indonesia must increase the standard test for law school candidates.

Bibliography

(n.d.). Retrieved from Lembaga Tes Masuk Perguruan Tinggi: https://ltmpt.ac.id/?mid=8

Law School Admission Council. (n.d.). Retrieved from Law School Admission Council Web site: https://www.lsac.org/lsat/taking-lsat/test-format/logical-reasoning

Lind, D. (2007). Logic and Legal Reasoning. The National Judicial College Press; 2nd edition (2007).

Michelman, F. I. (July 2003). Is the Constitution a Contract for Legitimacy? Review of Constitutional Studies.

Image 1 from Unsplash by Roel Dierckens

Image 2 from Freepik by Katemagostar